After seeing director J.T. Seaton’s super scary gay horror short film “Nightshadows,” I knew I had to see everything he did. I first checked out his short supernatural tale “Divination,” which stars scream queen Lynn Lowry. Lynn also happens to star in J.T.’s full-length feature George: A Zombie Intervention. Unlike his short films, George is a major horror comedy. Lynn is great, playing it straight as an interventionist yet pulling it off with comic perfection. And she is joined by an awesome cast of b-horror actors, including:
Peter Stickles: The Trouble with Barry, The Lair TV series
Eric Dean: Office of the Dead, The Trouble with Barry, Nine Lives, Alex Pucci’s Zombies
Brian Nolan: The Trouble with Barry, The Lair TV series
Matthew Stephen Herrick: The Trouble with Barry
Victoria De Mare – The Killjoy franchise
John Karyus: V/H/S/2, Poultrygeist, Killjoy Goes To Hell, Summer of Massacre
And then there’s George himself, played by Carlos Larkin, who can virtually deliver a laugh using only facial expressions. He is so good in this. He needs to beef up his indie horror resume!!!
As much as I loved J.T. Seaton’s short films, I was skeptical going into George. I very rarely like zombie films that humanize a single zombie. And when the movie started and we meet the friends who are planning to go to George’s place for the intervention, I feared I was going to be sitting through an hour and a half of dialogue driven story all revolving around their relationships with George.
Was I in for a surprise. Once they get to George’s place, it isn’t long before the hacking and munching comedy begins! The interactions between the characters are comedy gold—this cast really knows how to play off one another. And it becomes nonstop dark, gory humor that escalates as the film progresses.
George: A Zombie Intervention is sort of a zombie slasher! You have to see it to understand, but until the last section of the movie, characters get knocked off one by one in classic slasher fashion, and body count and comedy count is kept alive through the introduction of visitors to the house, including strippers and Mormons.
The gore is explicitly grisly! Boob gets eaten. Hairy man ass gets eaten. There is major zombie mutilation! There’s a gay subplot. There’s a major twist. There’s an all-out zombie infestation and zombie slaying massacre! And I can’t deny it; I thought some of the daddy bear zombies were hot. I’m also pretty sure there’s an homage to the scene in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video in which he and his lady stand back-to-back as they are surrounded by zombies.
Yet despite all the over-the-top gore and slapstick comedy, J.T. Seaton still manages to sneak in these brilliant moments that remind us that he knows how to set up a true horror scenario and deliver tense atmosphere. He could easily have made a frightening horror film if he wanted. But I’m so glad he didn’t. Because George: A Zombie Intervention pulls off something that Evil Dead 2 and Dead Alive didn’t; it delivers extreme splatter yet stays on a more human level by keeping us connected to the charming cast.
In the aftermath of the film’s conclusion, we get cameos from Brinke Stevens and Lloyd Kaufman, plus a tag after the final credits.
I don’t know what I’d rather get next from J.T. Seaton: a bone-chilling horror flick like his short films or another horror comedy? The good news is, either way, I’m pretty sure I won’t be disappointed.
